A long-planned project to reconfugure and expand the Martha’s Vineyard Refuse District’s central transfer station came before the Martha’s Vineyard Commission for a public hearing Thursday night, with abutters voicing concerns about the scale and scope of the expansion.

The project dates to 2016, when project managers first came before the commission with a plan to reconfigure and expand the footprint of the facility located off the Edgartown-West Tisbury Road in Edgartown. Unresolved funding and permitting issues forced the project to be put on hold.

Two years later, facility managers have drawn up a new plan that came before the commission Thursday night. The current proposal seeks to double the cleared area on the 23-acre site and separate the facility’s commercial and residential waste disposal lines. It also includes a plan for a future composting operation, although the details are still on the drawing board.

The refuse district services Edgartown, Chilmark, Aquinnah and West Tisbury (residents from Tisbury and Oak Bluffs can buy out-of-town stickers for waste disposal). The current project would clear an additional 6.5 acres of woods in the area and add three acres of pavement.

“From previous iterations of the project, one of the issues has been do they need to expand to the degree they are?” said Bill Veno, a commission staff planner who presented the project Thursday.

The staff report said the facility can have lines as long as 40 minutes during peak season in July and August. Facility manager Don Hatch said the district handles 10,000 tons of trash per year, equaling about 27 tons a day. The facility is licensed to handle 125 tons of trash per day. Project engineer Doug Rice cited the long lines, traffic and safety issues.

“Some of the key things about this improvement is that over time there’s been a trend shift from a lot of stuff coming in from commercial haulers to residents kind of being do-it-yourselfers,” Mr. Rice said. “There are a lot of close calls and tense moments when it gets busy, and it creates queue lines that go out to the West Tisbury Road.”

He said the district plans to put in a cedar and pine tree berm on the south side of the facility to mitigate the visual impact of the expansion. He admitted that the effect on noise mitigation would likely be minimal.

One sticking point for commissioners became the lack of concrete plans for the proposed composting facility. Although commissioners were upbeat over the fact that the district has worked with Island Grown Initiative to include an organic waste disposal section in the expansion, they sought more clarity.

“This is going to be a benefit to this expansion,” commissioner Ben Robinson said. “But it seems like a black hole right now because we don’t know how it will function.”

Mr. Hatch described early-stage plans for the composting facility.

“What size do we need for the Island is what we really need to iron out,” he said. “We want to prepare that area . . . we are not looking for official approval on it now.”

Abutters raised concerns about the expansion’s impact on their property. Kevin Selby worried about leakage from trash containers, as well as increased noise and traffic at the site.

“That road is going in front of my house. If you have 75 to 100 cars on that long road idling, that means I’m going to be breathing that carbon monoxide,” he said, adding: “Berms do not work for sound.”

Mr. Hatch said because the new facility would be more efficient, cars will move through three times as quickly, decreasing the time they idled. Mr. Selby also raised concerns about the clear cutting of trees.

“Where you have those trees is beautiful woods right now,” he said. “That’s all going to disappear so we can have this?”

Elizabeth and Don Harrington expressed fear that an expansion of the facility would jeopardize their well water. Mr. Hatch responded the facility planned to add three new monitoring wells between the facility and homeowners’ properties. But it did little to alleviate the concerns.

“We just keep expanding, and it’s not safe,” Ms. Harrington said.

“It’s loud, it’s very loud in fact,” Mr. Harrington added.

“It seems like you’re doubling the size just to look out for the busiest two months of the year,” neighbor Nils Leaf said. “It just seems excessive.”

The lone voice of support for the project came from Eunice Youmans, who heads the food waste recovery project for Island Grown Initiative. She spoke also as an Edgartown resident.

“It is a nightmare to get in and out of there as just a regular person in there on the weekend. It is a dangerous situation as it is today. So I really look to an expansion and better traffic flow there,” Ms. Youmans said. “I am also fully supportive of having a composting operation here on the Island.”

The public hearing was continued to Sept. 19. The commission asked district representatives for more detailed plans for the composting facility and later phases of the project.